Authors, Throw Your Thermometer Away and Turn Pro
Stop taking the temperature; start setting it
I recently wrote about authors who flutter their fans hoping to be discovered rather than making direct asks or proposals for what they want.
Here’s the business behavior companion to that fantasy: Authors who can’t make a single decision without checking the temperature first. Should I raise my prices? Let me ask three other authors. And my neighbor and my mom. Should I launch this course? Let me poll my audience. Should I pitch that partnership to that organization that feels a little out of my league? Let me see if anyone else in my three Facebook writing groups thinks it’s a good idea.
They’re thermometers, not thermostats—constantly measuring the environment instead of controlling it.
It’s a great analogy and I cribbed it from someone who grabbed it from Martin Luther King Jr. who used the metaphor multiple times in his speeches, sermons, and writing: “Be a thermostat, not a thermometer.” (Thank you and mea culpa.)
A thermometer reacts to and measures the temperature around it. A thermostat sets the temperature. In leadership, parenting, business—all the spheres—this means taking charge of your environment rather than just responding to it.
For authors building businesses, it means making decisions from your own authority—your knowledge of your work, your audience, your goals, your values—rather than crowdsourcing every choice and waiting for consensus or permission. (This is one excellent, proven way to avoid risk and bury one’s own expertise and inner guidance system.)
Turning pro and stepping confidently into your role as an author business owner means you stop asking, What do people think? and start clarifying for yourself, What do I think? Better yet, it’s asserting: Here’s what I’m doing.
You set your rates based on your expertise and the value you deliver, not a survey of what other authors charge. You launch the offering you know your audience needs, not the one that got the most emoji reactions in a social media poll. You pitch the partnerships and volume sales ideas that makes strategic sense for your business, not the one that feels safest because everyone approved. You make the call, then adjust based on results—not avoid the call until everyone else in the arenas that matter to you agrees it’s the right move.
Thermostats don’t ask permission. They decide what the temperature should be and make it happen.
For You and Your Author Business
Identify one decision you’ve been delaying because you’re still taking the temperature. The price increase. The program launch. The partnership pitch. The boundary you need to set. Quit polling. End the checking. Decide from your own authority—you know your business better than anyone else does—and act.
That’s what pros do.
They set the temperature. You can too.
Tell Us in the Comments
Where have you been taking the temperature in your author life and business instead of just making a decision, calling it? Calling it as you see it. Calling it as you want it. What would change if you decided today?
DIY PR for Authors with Tristra Newyear Yeager
Join our Beyond the Margins event series for our next free Zoom Power Hour for all authors. Learn simple PR strategies from Tristra Newyear Yeager, a PR veteran with 20+ years helping creative people get press—and a published author who’s done it herself. Discover how to find your story angle, time your campaign, pitch journalists, and build media relationships that matter. March 18, 1pm-2pm CT.